An artsy cameraman (really someone needs to keep their
cameramen under control) treats us to an eye boggling scene of a man running –
not sure from what, but he’s barging away through the crowds – occasionally switching
to a camera vision with a green box around his face. When security guards try
to confront him about his rather erratic behaviour he panics about “they’re
going to find me” and then he falls down dead – a projectile apparently
breaking glass and rustling someone’s newspaper (a future newspaper is just a
film of plastic… and not just a downloaded file?) to hit him in the very
crowded subway.
Cut to an anger management group and the leader praising
someone for how he’s managed to control his endless seething hate (this would
look more convincing if his facial expression didn’t suggest he was 5 seconds
away from stabbing someone); he even says as much to her, he still loathes
everything. But this is progress! See he loathes everyone but he hasn’t tried
to strangle anyone! He’s bottling his rage into a healthy seething pressure
cooker. YAY!
This may not be the best support group ever. John is also
a member and plasters a fake smile on his face because everything’s fiiiiine!
She tries to poke his sore spots, but everything’s wonderful – well, a lot
better than poor Marty over there, his life totally sucks. And he pronounces
his fellow group member Anil’s name “Anal”, because even in the far future
foreign names are just tooo hard.
When he leaves he’s greeted by Dorian and a bit of snark
and they head to the crime scene (for more snark about Detective Richard Paul
the arsehole) and more bits of plastic with moveable images on them which still
seem vastly inferior to a tablet. Looking at the bullet holes, Richard thinks
there were 3 shots fired – though they only found one bullet and no-one saw a
shooter; Richard’s MX points out that it was possible for one bullet to
ricochet and be responsible for all the damage – but it’s a slim chance. John
asks Dorian and he doubts the scenario because of the lack of residue for each
ricochet – the MX objects that Dorian is obsolete; John duly ignores the MX as
Dorian points out the circuitry in the bullet suggesting that while it did do
all the damage, it probably wasn’t due to random chance ricochets. When the MX
doesn’t shut up, John shoots it in the head.
Back at the police station, Maldonado is duly pissed
about John actually firing his gun, in public, for no damn good reason. Richard
is pissed because John broke his MX (which ends up with a childish scuffle when John says Richard doesn’t
care about MXs and Richard threatens to shoot Dorian). John thinks that MXs are
just machines and it’s quite reasonable for him to dispose of “faulty”
machines.
No John, when you work with a faulty machine, you send it
to be repaired. You flag it to the appropriate maintenance people. You even
turn it off. You do not draw a gun and shoot it in a crowded place because that
is dangerous. And you don’t destroy it because it costs money and you don’t
have the budget for snits.
John throws in an unnecessary gay joke as Richard leaves
and Maldonado puts on her understanding voice in hoping John will work better
with therapy – now back to the case. Uh-huh, that’s reassuring: because if you’re
actually going to say John has anger issues that causes him to shoot things
that annoy him then he should not be on duty. No no he should not.
Off to see Kira, Anton, the dead man’s girlfriend who
works at the same company as he did. On the way Dorian pokes John because he
likes him – and defended him to the MX, awww. Rudy also calls to confirm that,
yes, it’s a special electronic guided bullet.
They talk to Kira and find Anton was pretty inoffensive,
though he was being recruited by a headhunter. Dorian examines tech that
recognises and tracks a person and then tries to show them targeted advertising
(tech Anton created) – he points out to john that this is how Anton could be
tracked and killed since these sensors are everywhere. Rudy rings with some
more pieces of the puzzle – the circuits in the bullet were stolen by arms
dealers. Anton sold technology to arms dealers who then killed him with it.
Cut to said dealers showing off their product to a buyer –
who wants a demonstration. They decide to use Kira as the target (since she
needs to be killed anyway apparently)
John and Dorian exposition the team and the check up on
the headhunter Kira mentioned – except no-one of that name (Natalie) works for
the company she mentioned. But main plot is distracted by him noticing
Maldonado interviewing Reinhardt. My gods, is this meta? This looks like meta! He’s
the Insyndicate guy who was looking for something in police evidence in the
pilot. Maldonado wants him to show them what they Insyndicate was after in
the warehouse; John shows up so Reinhardt can taunt him and try to get him to convince
Maldonado to drop all charges against him in exchange for the information. That’s
not going to happen.
Back to the main plot and they confront Kira about her recruiter story – and Kira admits that she may have had the name wrong (or Anton may have lied) and describes the woman – she’s clearly one of the arms dealers we saw earlier. Speaking of – they set up their equipment for the demonstration and fire their homing bullet. It darts through the city as Dorian gets more and more agitated by the cameras all around – and he steps in front of the bullet.
It’s a good thing Dorian is a gazillion times tougher
than an MX, isn’t it? The damage does make him only speak Korean, though – just
run with it, it’s probably one of the more realistic things on this show. They
put Kira in an armoured car so she can’t be shot then open the door for a nice
long conversation because John is hardly the brightest star out there.
They take Kira and her daughter Amy to a safe house. Kira
is desperate and worried and considered being “scrubbed”, which seems to be a
memory erasure, making her no longer a threat to the assassins. John talks her
out of it and now wants her to be bait
Police procedures are fast and loose in the future.
Valerie tracks down a safety deposit box Anton was using
and they find a lot of random items and a video threatening Kira – they were
forcing Anton to co-operate, he wasn’t helping by choice.
Valerie and Maldonado show Donavon and John an advert on the net for the new bullet – including footage of Anton’s death (the advert is in Chechen, which doesn’t seem likely to get a very wide audience) and they learn that Kira has left the safe house – though that seems to be John’s plan, she’s just going for it alone. Especially since she’s underground where the bullet can’t get her, forcing the dealers to go find her in person.
Checking the location, they realise Kira has gone to a
scrubber – and John and Dorian burst in the underground memory shop (which I really
want to see more of). They find Kira and she’s angry – she wants them to find
her and see her get her memory scrubbed. They try to get her out – and run into
the arms dealers. Firefight time! Using Dorian as a bullet shield (good thing
he’s tougher than an MX) they bring down the arms dealers.
Kira, this week’s damsel, is rescued so she can be reassured that Anton really did love her and wasn’t evil. Awwww. The code is also a romantic momento from the pair of them.
Valeria and John flirt some more (I like how pens are presented as old fashioned and unusual though) and Maldonado thanks John for going a day without violently destroying police property.
The way John treats MX and Dorian is probably the
greatest indication that Dorian has crossed the line from machine to human in
his eyes. However him shooting the MX was ridiculous – and I actually like
Maldonado’s rant more than detective Paul’s (though, really, annihilating
police property for funsies is utterly ridiculous) – he just fired his gun in a
crowded subway because the android was annoying – why is John considered fit
for duty again? Are we actually supposed to support John in this because he’s
backing Dorian?
I have to say I’m not exactly sold on Almost Human’s attempt at trying to sell
us on the extremes of modern technology if they’re taken too far – because these
episodes seem to be written by people who don’t truly understand the concerns
we’re trying to warn about. Like in the last episode – it was such a shallow
view of social media (and missed that the man was hardly the first spree
killer to kill for the attention) and now we have the evils of the endless
cookie-collecting of the internet where every detail about us is collected
constantly. Which, yes, is a concern –it’s a concern because there’s a huge
database of information about us being used by people who have only the most
quasi-consent to have that information and very little actual regulation or
ethics about how they use that data, effectively annihilating our right to
privacy in the drive to sell us more shit. That is a concern. Not that facebook
may develop a homing bullet.
The idea of using futurist sci-fi as a way to warn us
about the evils of the present is a good one – I approve. But you need to
actually present the actual concerns of the present, otherwise you lose the
chain of causation and fail to make the point you’re struggling to develop.
We have some attempt to touch on John’s mental illness –
I’ve said before that this has been very neglected. Except… anger management?
Yes, I’m sure rage can by a symptom of his PTSD – but the first episode shows
him having actual flashbacks and losing time, I think something more than anger
management group therapy is needed here. Worse, John’s mental illness seems to
be used almost as an excuse for him to be, well, violent and untrustworthy –
while at the same time downplaying both od these.
